86 comments:

What if you make them a cup of tea, they enjoy it, they tell all their friends how awesome the tea was, but several months later someone convinces them that, well, maybe they really didn't really want tea at all?

What if you have consensual tea, and you kind of enjoy being hit with the tea bag.Then you decide you were raped and you carry your tea bag around campus for the next two years. Should you be celebrated by a Senator?

(isn't it funny how the Congresspeople have stopped talking about her? Does Hillary Clinton bring her up?)

Consent never seems to be an issue for an invading Army seeking to conquer a newly invaded territory. In fact, using Non-consensual actions are the basic tools that are used along with other types of force until Submission to allah is total.

I've seen this. It's pretty dumb. The issues at stake are not whether one should obtain consent, everyone agrees on that one. The issue is whether or not we should completely eliminate civil rights and due process for men should a woman accuse them of not properly obtaining consent.

I'm obviously old school@72, but I've been around the race track often enough to to know that, in male-female relationships, "no" often means "yes." It being a way in which the female can convince her conscious that she is not being a "slut" before she commits herself to a sexual act she really wants to do anyway. The only sin being the under-performance of the male to the dissatisfaction of the female post coitis. In today's sexual climate that is a cultural and legal death sentence. My own wife was one of those who said "no" and yet we've been happily married for some 43 years now. So much for "rape rape."

If I say yes to your stupid metaphor and then pass out before finishing your stupid metaphor, don't keep pouring your stupid metaphor down my metaphorical throat. I could metaphorically gag on it and it would be your "fault."

At 0:55, there's the scenario where the stick person says I want tea and the other one goes off to take all the trouble to make tea then serves it only to find that person #1 no longer wants tea. So person #2 accepts that the tea is not wanted and might feel put out by that but you have to go along with person #1's not wanting to drink tea.

But what of the alternate scenario in which, when person #2 brings the tea that person #1 requested and person #1 doesn't want it but feels that since person #2 went to all that trouble on her account, she should go ahead and drink it. She doesn't want it, but she doesn't want to say so, and she just drinks it, not wanting it.

I know: The video doesn't address that. But that's the affirmative consent problem. Is Person #1 entitled to get Person #2 in trouble for that? Should those who may find themselves in Person #1's position be taught -- perhaps with very simple animations -- that they should be aware of their own preferences, confident that they don't have to do what they don't want, and straightforward enough to just say no when the tea arrives?

There's a higher level of human interaction here. Maybe Person #2, serving the tea, should present it with questions: Do you still want that tea you said you wanted? And Person #1 should say: I'm sorry, you know honestly, I really don't want it now, but you were really nice to make it for me.

If the girl with the pony tail asks you to drive her TT and then tells you to keep both hands on the wheel while she unbuttons your jeans and gives you oral sex, don't be a stooge. You have NOT given affirmative consent.

To extend my remarks, to clarify. If I had tried/been required to obtain formal "consent" in the formulaic & legalistic way that todays Feminista & SJW crowd and government drones in the Title IX Kafka-like bureaucracy demand, we probably would never have had sex in the first place. So exactly WHENCE do these Orwellian types derive their "moral & ethical" right to impose their eyes and ears into the most private of human activities? Wasn't academe supposed to have washed its hands of all things en loco en parentis circa the mid 70s? Isn't that why we have sex mixed dorms, even sex mixed roommates at some universities these days. God forbid that campus administrations suggest that sex-segregated dorms be brought back. Even worse, requiring co-eds (a non PC term now I know) to remain in their dorms after certain hours. GAAAK!!!!!!! But if this were done I can assure one and all of one thing for sure: "Unwanted sexual advances" would become almost as rare as the Giant Dodo bird..

My reaction to the person who says, "Fuck yeah, I want a cup of tea! I'm crazy for tea! I want tea right now!" is that maybe you should not have tea. You are way over-caffeinated already. I don't think I should give you tea now. I am sorry I offered you tea!

My reaction to the person who says, "Oh, I don't know, maybe. Do you think I'll like tea? I don't know" is to say, oh you will love my tea. Let me make you some tea, baby. I make the world's best tea!

The line of reasoning you make is the reason that Orwell made the comment that "there are some things ONLY intellectuals could ever possibly believe in; no ordinary person could ever BE such a fool!"

Your dry, abstract, reasoning is totally detached from the real world of 18 and 19 year-olds of both sexes with raging hormones living and working in close proximity to each other. Such academic logic as you suggest will NEVER be imbibed by the crowd you are directing it towards. Biology trumps all--even that of the logic of the law and academe. You need to walk on over to the biology and psychology depts (and perhaps the human antro types while you're at it) and talk to them for a while..

Look at the armed services. If--with all the powers of discipline, rules, regimentation and punishment via the UCMJ they have at hand--the armed services can't stop or even get a handle on "fraternization" and "unwanted" sexual advances between the sexes, ya think civilian teenagers are going to be stopped on campus? Ya think?

It hadn’t been a day when everything had turned out right –She called me up and asked me to come over in the night,To make her cups of tea and listen quietly as she startsTo list the latest list of bastards who have trampled on her heart.

I see her in the nightclubs, I see her in the bars,At rooftop after-parties, or crammed into friends’ cars,And we talk about the weather, and how she drowns her pain in drink,And I nod and never ever dare to tell her what I think.

"True" story: Back in college in the 70's, a young woman made me a pot of tea and I said, "no thanks, I don't drink tea" and she said, "try mine, you might change your mind" and I said, "no" again and she said, "DRINK IT OR I'LL CALL THE COPS AND TELL THEM YOU FORCED ME TO MAKE TEA FOR YOU" so I walked out of her apartment saying, "go ahead, make my day" and she said, "and I'm also going to tell them you forced me to make your day!"

It would be nice if feminists would adopt the tea standard. "That rude man gave me a cup of tea and I didn't want it but I drank it anyway." Not rape, dummy. You're just drinking tea. But if the rude man forces you to swallow tea, if he pries open your mouth and shoves tea in, then it's a felony.

You know, Klipshorn was right I think when he spoke of the `blanketing' effect of ordinary language, referring, as I recall, to the part that sort of, you know, `fills in' between the other parts. That part, the `filling' you might say, of which the expression `you might say' is a good example, is to me the most interesting part, and of course it might also be called the `stuffing' I suppose, and there is probably also, in addition, some other word that would do as well, to describe it, or maybe a number of them. But the quality this `stuffing' has, that the other parts of verbality do not have, is two-parted, perhaps: (1) and `endless' quality and (2) a `sludge' quality. Of course that is possibly two qualities but I prefer to think of them as different aspects of a single quality, if you can think that way. The `endless' aspect of `stuffing' is that it goes on and on, in many different forms, and in fact our exchanges are in large measure composed of it, in larger measure even, perhaps, than they are composed of that which is not `stuffing.' The `sludge' quality is the *heaviness* that this `stuff' has, similar to the heavier motor oils, a kind of downward pull but still fluid, if you follow me, and I can't help thinking that this downwardness is valuable, although it's hard to say how, right at the moment. So, summing up, there is a relation between what I have been saying and what we're doing here at the plant with these plastic buffalo humps. Now you're probably familiar with the fact that the per-capita production of trash in this country is up from 2.75 pounds per day in 1920 to 4.5 pounds per day in 1965, the last year for which we have figures, and is increasing at the rate of about four percent per year. Now that rate will probably go up, because it's *been* going up, and I hazard that we may very well soon reach a point where it's 100 percent, right? And there can no longer be any question of `disposing' of it, because it's all there is, and we will simply have to learn how to `dig' it--that's slang, but peculiarly appropriate here. So that's why we're in humps, right now, more really from a philosophical point of view than because we find them a great moneymaker. They are `trash,' and what in fact could be more useless and trashlike? It's that we want to be on the leading edge of this trash phenomenon, the everted sphere of the future, and that's why we pay particular attention, too, to those aspects of language that may be seen as a model of the trash phenomenon. And it's certainly been a pleasure showing you around the plant this afternoon, and meeting you, and talking to you about these things, which are really more important, I believe, than people tend to think. Would you like a cold Coke from the Coke machine now, before you go?

Oh man, I got so aggravated with the opening of the video! The narrator's definition of "consent" was so narrow, so ridiculous, that I stopped watching and wrote like four posts in a row.

Then I went back and watched more of the video. I actually like the analogy very much. I think the intent of the video is to train men. If only men understood consent, we wouldn't have rape. It's idiotic, and so damn liberal. Let's combat rape with cute cartoons. Let's indoctrinate the six year olds, and they will grow up to be not-rapists. Maybe it will work!

But now I appreciate the analogy for what it teaches young women. Rape is a crime of violence! Just because you drank tea when you didn't really want tea, does not mean you should call the tea-giver a rapist!

And while I approve of the cartoon that attempts to indoctrinate young girls and boys as to what is rape, and what is not rape, I would add that indoctrination only works on children, not on (independent-minded) adults. Violent rapists are not going to be turned from the evil one by your squiggles, you dumb liberals. Kids, yes. Kids are your market for indoctrinating cartoons.

Some people ask for tea, drink it willingly, but then regret drinking it hours, days, or even months later. Unfortunately, there is a title IX campus tea administrator lurking around the tea shop trying to convincing this regretting tea drinker that the decision to order and drink the tea was not consensual.

I would not use tea for this analogy. I would instead use brisket of beef. Suppose you set up table with a carving board and a side of brisket which you proceeded to slice. The slicing filled the room with the tantalizing aroma of the brisket. Let us further stipulate that the room is being used for a meeting of Weight Watchers. Does a dieter in this room have the right to grab a handful of meat when the slicer is distracted? Alternately, does the slicer have the right to stab the person who tries to swipe the meat? Let us further stipulate that the brisket came from a sacred cow that only the anointed have the right to sup on.........I rest my case. I think I have conclusively shown that you can't argue from analogy.

Alcohol screws up many of our criminal and civil laws. In some scenarios, being drunk makes you a criminal. In other scenarios, being drunk makes you an innocent. You're often not liable for your contracts, if you are drunk. It's bizarre, all the alcohol varieties there are in our legal system. We don't know what to do with our drunks!

And now we have an obviously sexist and man-hating regime on many college campuses. Drunk man = predator, drunk woman = potential victim. He gets the adult standard of being responsible for his drinking and his actions. She gets the child protections of the nanny state.

It's an obvious and blatant double standard for drunk men and drunk women. We still have the ancient (and sexist!) urge to protect women, the baby-makers. But when you add to this a 21st century hostility to men--which is rampant on the left--you get an ugly and unfair separate set of rules for drunk men and women who have sex.

The other strange aspect of this analogy is the idea that sex involves a servant and a consumer.

Of course there is sex difference. Woman is the one who can get pregnant. Sex for her might mean a 9 month or an 18 year commitment. For a man, on the other hand, the commitment might be as short as 15 minutes. This is why woman are the deciders. They are the ones who say, yay or nay. And it's why men are more comfortable with promiscuity. Biologically speaking, a man wants to spread his seed around to make sure he's reproducing. A woman, on the other hand, knows she's reproducing. Thus she wants to make sure she is having sex with a good man, who will provide for his children.

Sexual desire is based on a biological urge to reproduce. It's why we have a sexual desire! (It's weird to me that so many liberals, who claim to love Darwin, fail to grasp this).

It is wrong for men to think, "sex is for me," or for women to think, "sex is for me." Sex is far better if it's a team effort! And if you're aware of the baby you might be making, it's not only passionate, but far happier.

Contrast this biological reality--human reproduction--with the attitude in this video. The instruction manual is that sex is one-sided. There is a consumer, the one who imbibes the tea, and a servant who provides the tea. I think of the consumer as female, since in both cases she is the one who will be receiving liquid refreshment. So to speak. And the instruction manual is for the servant. This is how you approach a person and offer them tea. It's a lesson in chivalry. That (of course!) only men need.

If we see men and women as equals (separate but equal!), how does this video fail? It suggests that one party has only one obligation--to enjoy sex. And the other party has many duties and obligations, which of course makes sense, if you're defining that party as a servant, as an inferior.

Note that Christianity urges us all to be servants to one another! And yet this call is hardly limited to only one gender. So yes, it's fair to note that men are different from women. But surely that does not mean that only one participant gets to enjoy sex, while the other one has to prepare for it and clean up afterwards. Is this equality or a new kind of chauvinism?

I don't know, sometimes a girl might like a guy to beg for something and want to give into him if she loves him enough to want to please him and it's really easy for her to imagine herself totally not wanting to give in to someone else who it is really easy for her to imagine begging her for something that would be somewhat analogously pleasant for him. There are actually a few good things males can appropriately want just for the sexual fun of them. A guy can want them because they are beautiful and not love her as well if she is less beautiful, thereby appropriately encouraging his getting of them, or he can love her better for giving them to him just from the sexual fun of them, also appropriately getting them, or he can sort of split the difference and beg for them for sexual fun but love her for giving them because they are beautiful, also appropriately getting them. British girls look like they do close friendships with other girls particularly well—it tends to be what especially makes them interesting and beautiful—which I suppose might make them less into splitting the difference and less into male begging—not as necessary. On average, mostly everyone on this side of the Atlantic (except Native Americans and African Americans) has willingly emigrated once more than the ancestral British over there, and people majorly into friendship just don't tend to be the sort to get up and emigrate or to have as many ancestors who tended to do that. But it feels like girls who mostly are only swayed by a lover when he is seeking beauty also could use intimacy with girl(s) who may ultimately enjoy him begging (and vice versa), (as well as intimacy with girl(s) appropriately controlled for fun).

But what of the alternate scenario in which, when person #2 brings the tea that person #1 requested and person #1 doesn't want it but feels that since person #2 went to all that trouble on her account, she should go ahead and drink it. She doesn't want it, but she doesn't want to say so, and she just drinks it, not wanting it.

In that situation person #2 is consenting.

Suppose someone convinces someone else to get a tattoo but on the way to the tattoo parlor they decide that they don't really want a tattoo, but also don't want to look bad to the person who convinced them to get a tattoo, so they get a tattoo that they didn't really want, because they are an insecure idiot.

Did the person who convinced them to get the tattoo in the first place force them to get the tattoo?

What if person #2 makes a pot of tea and sets a cup of tea on the table in front of person #1, and then person #1 picks up the cup and drinks the tea? And then person #2 refills person #1's cup with more tea, and person #1 picks it up and drinks it?

Person #1 was never asked if they wanted a cup of tea, yet when presented with a cup of tea they drank it. And when presented with a second cup of tea, they drank that one, also. Did person #1 ever give affirmative consent? Was the question even asked, or just implied?

Where does an implied request and an implied consent come into play in the moronic cartoon? Or am I now expelled from the professor's blog for five years?

The woman is supposed to be tossed into the air by the man and then caught. She should want to be tossed before he tosses her, but at some point changing her mind doesn't make sense, if she's on her way up, I suppose he could not let go but that could cause her to slam into the ground, and definitely once she's in the air. After she's back on the ground, is it reasonable for her to retroactively withdraw her consent? Even if he dropped her?

People are different. Maybe some women say "no" to mean "yes." But I *can* say "yes," and when I say "no" I mean "no" and I dated men who absolutely did not get it, including one who date raped me despite the fact that I said "no" about a million times. I gave him a ton of s h*it about it. We got though it and are still friends more than 30 years later but over the years I have talked to two other women with whom he was inappropriately sexually aggressive (short of date rape) - *after* he dated me - and of course that could have happened to many other women, and sometimes I wonder if talking it through and forgiving him was the best thing to do from the point of view of protecting other women's safety. On the other hand, what else to do? Reporting date rape may sometimes be useful but without going into detail it definitely would not have been the useful thing to do in that situation. But I did experience a *lot* of depression afterwards, was suicidal for a time, and slept around more than I would have otherwise to keep "no" from becoming an issue, so it was as very negative experience for me overall.

When I met my husband and we went to his apartment for the first time and were close to becoming intimate, he said to me, "Do you feel safe?" I can't tell you how much that meant to me and how sexy it was. Nearly 20 years into our relationship it is still one of my favorite memories and still feels sexy to me.

It's interesting to me that some of the popular romantic literature around today, like Twilight (which I wasn't into but I read because I had a tween daughter at the time) is basically consent porn - the guy absolutely insists on a formal "yes" of some sort before he agrees to take things further. This is in contrast to that type of literature when I was young where the guy ususally turned a "no" into a "yes."

One generalization that held true in my life....I'm 52. When I was young and single, it was the guys my age and older who tended towards believing "no means yes." The two younger guys I dated - one became my husband - both understood that "yes means yes."

BTW, my husband and I both think that the tea video is funny, awesome, and right on, and we've showed it to our teenage son who was embarrassed but I think the message still got through.

Yes, it is very much a generational thing. But understand that "no means no" and its variant "no means yes" was very much a situational thing even then (and still is today) and required some sophistication/judgement to understand when one case applied and the other did not and visa versa. HOWEVER I also very much believe the females of my generation were made of somewhat sterner stuff than todays snowflake generation and understood that the old adage "in for a dime in for a dollar" applied to sex as well as a multitude of other things. This short video--however funny--smacks of a totally artificial construct/universe not even remotely connected to the real world most of us inhabit, i.e., one almost impossible to consistently practice/"operationalize." The only difference between 1962 and today in sexual/hormonal desires between the sexes? Forty plus years of unceasing feminist propaganda that has practically ruined male-female relationships, e.g., the increasing numbers of young males eschewing relationships with real women and becoming totally absorbed in the artificial world of computer gaming as an alternative. And just wait until artificial robotic and/or computer sex is perfected. Women will be lucky to find a male humanoid within a thousand miles in any direction with whom to "date." And the "feministas" who are driving todays young males into this sexual escapism safe from the police, lawyers and hordes of bureaucrats worshiping at Kafkas alter are doing so all by their lonesome and have only themselves to blame. I find this whole discussion an intellectual dead-end anyway; having nothing to do with reality or life as real people actually live it.(Please see my add comments from my original comments@9:31am , 9:22am if you missed them)

What about if you already drank so many Long Island Ice Teas that when you say "yes, I'd like plain tea please" your brain is unable to form memories because you have blacked out from conscious decisionmaking, but give no indication you are not consenting.

But you 'come to' and find tea being drunk by you, and you don't remember sitting in the chair, or picking up the cup.

Or getting the tattoo

Or wearing the lampshade on your head

Or nodding, going into his bed, stripping of your clothes, and starting to have sex.